January 9 2021
Obituary Lillian Louise Fuller passed away on Saturday, January 9th, 2021 at the age of eighty-eight years in Grand Rapids. She was born to Sanford and Wilda Martin in Columbus, Ohio in 1932, the fourth of five children. She attended Columbus North High School and graduated as valedictorian of her class. After graduation, she attended Minnesota Bible College but her schooling was cut short when a young medical student and family friend, Raymond Fuller, pursued her to the college and married her in the minister’s living room at six o’clock on the morning on a winter’s day in 1951 as a blizzard was breaking. The newlyweds followed the snowplows to Columbus and Lillian found work as the secretary to the Dean of the School of Pharmacology at the Ohio State University, helping to put Raymond through medical school. Between 1952 and 1961, Lillian gave birth to five children while the family set up house for short periods in Columbus, Grand Rapids, New Orleans, and Detroit, returning to Grand Rapids where Raymond worked at Blodgett Hospital and later joined a local medical practice as an internist, eventually specializing in cardiology. As their children grew up in Grand Rapids, Lillian and Raymond joined with other families to start and support several new churches in the area, including Woodview, Kentwood, and Jennison Christian Churches. When her children had grown up enough, Lillian went back to college, first attending Grand Rapids Junior College, then later Calvin College, where she earned a BA in Education in 1977. It is impossible, though, to sum up Lillian Fuller by recounting the bare facts of her life. She was an accomplished, award-winning artist, equally skilled with a brush or palette knife, always exploring new techniques, whose watercolor and oil paintings beautify her husband’s and children’s homes today. She was a Sunday School teacher who would spend three to four days preparing lesson materials with games, puzzles, and visuals from all over – anything to get the point across. She was a missionary at heart, who traveled with her doctor husband on twenty-five medical mission trips to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Thailand, the Philippines, including three months in Lahore, Pakistan where she wore native dress to visit the local women and eat chapati with them. What shone through Lillian was her great compassion for children. While her own five children were growing up, she took in 15 foster children at different times, a few of whom lived with the family for years. She served as a volunteer social worker in the Suspected Child Abuse & Neglect (SCAN) program for Child Haven, for which Lillian was recognized with the “Kent County Volunteer of the Year” award in 1984. She would travel as far as Japan to take care of the older grandchildren when her daughters-in-law had babies. As former neighbors have testified, Lillian was “Mom” to any kid that walked through the door, especially at supper time. What motivated Lillian Fuller and directed the course of her life was her deep faith in Christ. She was an amazing mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, as well as an exceedingly faithful wife, Christian laborer, and civic volunteer. She trusted so completely in God that her family is certain that she has now heard our Lord’s words, “Well done,” and “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Lillian Fuller is survived by her husband of 69 years, Dr. Raymond Fuller of Grand Rapids, her sister Evelyn Jeffers of Philadelphia, and her children Steven (Nancy), Timothy (Marcia), James ( Didi), Sharon (Ray Chamberlain), and Chet (Veronica) Fuller, together with 16 grand-children and 14 great-grandchildren. Private services will be held and burial will take place in Ohio at a later date.And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” – Revelation 14: 13 Events There are no events scheduled.
Our most sincere sympathies to the family and friends of Lillian Louise Fuller January 9 2021.
Death notice for the town of: Grand Rapids, state: Michigan